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Alan Ginster's Unbearded Britain
Think there's more to Britain's streets than
meets the eye? Think again! Coat-wearing urban mystic Alan
Ginster digs beneath the thin veneer of reality
to expose the secret history of the nation's familiar landmarks.
1) Just outside the HSBC in Chiswick
High Street
To the casual Dutch tourist the frontage of
this recently-renamed money lending establishment looks entirely
commonplace. The odd stain, stray leaf or tosser aside, nothing
marks this place out as remotely unusual. But it was not ever
thus. For behind this seemingly financial facade lies a tale
of Victorian injustice and wrongdoing; a tale of ignorance,
bigotry... and madgick!
Vini Reilly was born in 1821, the son of a well-to-do
non-Irish builder, and a practitioner of the same strand of
Big Old madgick that many sorcerers, myself included, still
practice today. Big Old madgickians are essentially peaceful
and never use their powers without severe provocation or the
chance of a resulting laugh riot, but some of our harmless
beliefs make us prone to misunderstanding by the ignorant
and spiritually decaffeinated.
One such belief resulted in the local constable
arresting Reilly in Chiswick Post Office for the crime of
looking askance at the picture of Queen Victoria on the postal
order he was attempting to cash. According to Big Old madgickal
lore, any graven image must first be looked at from the side
of the head before a full-on gaze, lest the intrusion cause
the image to come to life, rip itself from the paper and run
amok, molesting mice and pixies.
Alas, for so-called Victorian society, this
considerate madgick was beyond comprehension. The vicar’s
judgement was damning. “A postal order is a postal order,
and they who fail to recognise this are guilty of no more
than vile, bloody treason,” he roared to a packed town
hall that night. “And then there’s his silly hat,
already. I mean, felt? In 1886? Like, hell-o!” A motion
was made to subject Reilly to an official tut-tutting in the
square, plus a set of steak knives for his trouble.
The good folk of Chiswick were acting in vain.
Reilly was already exacting his revenge, preparing the most
fearsome curse in the Big Old canon, referred to by scholars
as ‘a possession of the throat’. A curse of this
magnitude is usually applied to an item of stationery, the
better to contain its volatile potential. Reilly used a packet
of ‘Righteous Tom’ brass paper fasteners, which
he infused with the incantation, placed inside a stylish men’s
leather satchel, and left on a bench in Chiswick High Street...
to be discovered.
Reilly was on the last train to Ipswich by the
time the tramp opened the satchel, but he relaxed into his
roast goose, safe in the knowledge his diabolical work was
done.
The curse spread over Chiswick’s unsuspecting
streets like eerie butter, striking his tormentors one by
hapless one. The policeman coughed, the vicar coughed, everybody...
coughed! Coughed!! COUGHED!!!
Next issue: Littlewoods in Wrexham
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